We decided to refresh and re-JUICE-enate a blog post that Chris wrote in 2005. Click here to read the original.

The way the game of analytics is played today, there isn’t much competition. The statisticians are on the field, the storytellers are on the bench—or in the stands—or, sometimes, not even in the stadium.

We first expressed this sentiment almost a decade ago, but in the last ten years not much has changed. There may be a lot more players, and there is definitely a lot more data, but statisticians and storytellers still aren’t playing on the same field together.

In Chris’ earlier post we proposed that the answer to getting statisticians and storytellers to work together lay in the visualizations themselves. We still maintain that’s true, but believe that there is a bigger emphasis needed on storytelling and fostering discussions among people about data. While visualizations were relatively new ten years ago, today every CFO around the world has already approved their first visualization purchase order. Unfortunately, there’s too much focus on charting capability vs. bringing these teams to together to solve real business problems. As Chris stated 10 years ago, visualizations should be designed not to just reflect data, but to engage the user with a story. When visualizations are approached in this way, it provides the perfect environment for statisticians and storytellers to collaborate and succeed.

At Juice, we’re now ten years into our story, we continue to help organizations bridge the gap between statisticians and storytellers. To learn some of the recent stories check out the case studies on our travel and hospitality, digital advertising, research, and healthcare solution pages. Give them a read and share your story in the comments below.